Scottish, French Firms Partner Up to Speed Up Tidal Energy Development

Tidal technology companies Nova Innovation from Scotland and Sabella from France, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to speed up the development of tidal energy sites for both Scottish and French companies.

The company said they'd combine expertise to drive rapid scale-up of installed capacity in the tidal energy sector in both the UK and France. 

"The alliance will include co-operation across French and UK sites, driving down costs, catalyzing opportunities for funding, and delivering economies of scale to tackle the climate emergency," the companies said.

In November 2020, the European Commission published the European Offshore Strategy setting out the challenge of delivering marine energy capacity targets of 100MW by 2025, and 1GW by 2030. 

The move spurred talks between Nova Innovation and Sabella on how to combine efforts to meet the targets, resulting in the signing of this transformational MoU, Nova said Wednesday.Nova Innovation's Eunice Tidal Turbine

 Fanch Le Bris, CEO of SABELLA, said: "We welcome this MoU between Sabella and Nova Innovation, and we can already see significant benefits from our teams working together to build capacity for tidal energy across France and the UK and making tidal energy a commercial reality.”

Simon Forrest, CEO of Nova Innovation, added: "We are delighted to formalize our cooperation with Sabella on site development of projects in France and the UK. Following a similar evolution to the commercialization of the wind sector, this MoU creates a pathway to accelerate delivery of larger, high-impact projects to take tidal energy mainstream.”

Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy in the Scottish Government, said: “Nova Innovation is a pioneer in tidal energy technology and the Scottish Government is proud to have played a supporting role in its achievements to date. I welcome this agreement between Nova and Sabella  and I look forward to it delivering further opportunities for both companies – along with the wider sector - to grow, develop and realise the potential that tidal energy has in our journey to net-zero.”

Nova Innovation and Sabella will share information on-site development, technical expertise, environmental data and their thriving networks to accelerate the time it takes to deploy projects and maximize cost efficiency of site development.